Howard Kurtz Sees No Problem With Media's Failure To Cover Rudy Farm Gaffe
(May 16, 2007 -- 12:31 PM EDT // link // )

Amazing. Via Media Matters, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz says in a chat with readers that he sees no problem with the media's failure to cover the Rudy campaign's snubbing of an Iowa farm family because they weren't millionaires:

Washington: Hi Mr. Kurtz, thanks for taking my question. So, are we going to see a feeding frenzy of process stories on Giuliani's gaffe, where his campaign asked an Iowa farm family to host a fundraiser and then backed out because their farm wasn't valuable enough to be subject to the estate tax? If it doesn't get as much press as the Edwards haircut story, isn't that pretty clear evidence of conservative bias in those outlets that neglect the Giuliani story? It always seemed to me that story selection is the real test of whether or not a news outlet is objective.

Howard Kurtz: No, I don't think it's evidence of pretty clear bias because I don't think the two are comparable. While the haircut story has been overblown, Edwards presumably knew about it, since it was his hair being cut, and he had the good sense to say he was embarrassed about it. There's no evidence that Giuliani personally knew about his staff's effort to line up a farming family hit by the estate tax. And I do believe that political staffs looking for real-life examples of this or that policy do this kind of prospecting all the time.

Howard: Lemme have a crack at explaining why I think you're wrong here -- if you're game, it could lead to a much-need discussion of some important stuff about the state of our political reporting today.

You are right to point out that the parallel between Edwards' haircut and the Rudy camp's farm gaffe is imperfect in the sense that in Rudy's case staff was involved. But that's an absurdly narrow way to look at this. The larger and far more important context here is that this episode reveals the glaring schizophrenia that dominates much of the media's coverage of Republicans and Dems when it comes to their personal wealth.

One of the key justifications people in the media offer for devoting so much coverage to Edwards' haircut -- coverage that you yourself said was "overblown" -- is that it allegedly cuts against Edwards' populist campaign. This has also been the justification for story after story in your own paper about Edwards' wealth -- stories that even your own Ombud has condemned precisely for leaning on that justification. This alone wouldn't be terribly important, but for the fact -- ably demonstrated by Jamison Foser -- that this is the fundamental larger media default setting when it comes to covering Dems. Because Dems are interested in antipoverty policy, their personal wealth and conduct is automatically a liability, a sign of hypocrisy.

Though this justification is everywhere in the media, the absurdity of it is strikingly, almost comically, obvious. After all, we generally think it's a good thing when wealthy private sector folks show concern for the poor in the form of charity or philanthropy. Yet, absurdly, when politicians -- that is, mainly Democrats -- voice concern for the poor or advocate for antipoverty policies, this is taken in the media as a sign that it's open season on Dems' personal wealth and grooming habits and the alleged hypocrisy they embody. This media default setting also holds that the wealth of Republicans doesn't make them hypocrites because of their lack of interest in poverty. And this, I submit, is the real reason for the lack of coverage of the Rudy campaign's snubbing of the non-millionaire farm family, not the reasons you gave.

On this score, here's a question. What do you think would have happened in the media if the campaign of Edwards or Hillary had done this -- that is, if Edwards or Hillary's people had put out a poor Iowa farmer in this manner, because the farm was seen as too modest?

This is admittedly a speculative question. But let's speculate. I say a hailstone of media attention would have rained down on that Iowa farm. It would have been all over TV for days and days and days and would have been debated relentlessly by the pundits. Do you really think the media would have been able to resist such a story? Would reporters and editors really have cited the reasons you gave for not covering this -- it wasn't Edwards or Hillary per se; campaign staffs do prospecting like this all the time -- and taken a pass? No way. And again, the Dems' interest in poverty would have been the stated reason why. That's the larger problem at play here.

Come on, Howard, let's dig deep and use some imagination. What would the media treatment really have been like if Edwards or Hillary had done this? And why?

Update: A commenter writes: "I seem to recall a firestorm of controversy about the Edwards campaign hiring so-called foul-mouthed Catholic-hating bloggers. Presumably John Edwards was not personally involved in hiring decisions for low-level staffers like that, but that didn't stop the media having a field day."

No, indeed it didn't. Howard?

Update II: Another commenter takes on the it-was-only-staffers argument: "To accept Kurtz's argument that Edwards `presumably knew about' the cost of his haircut, you'd have to believe that Edwards makes his own haircut appointments and pays for them out of his own pocket. Sounds far-fetched to me." Seriously. Isn't it likely that a staffer made Edwards' haircut appointment?

Howard?

You there?

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CBS News Consultant O'Hanlon Wants To See Batiste Back On CBS
(May 15, 2007 -- 3:36 PM EDT // link // )

Okay, guess who wants to see retired General John Batiste -- who was fired by CBS as a news consultant for bashing Bush and the war in that VoteVets ad -- put back on air by the network?

Another of CBS' own most high-profile news consultants: Michael O'Hanlon.

This, despite the fact that O'Hanlon also happens to be a proponent of the surge. I just spoke to O'Hanlon, and he told me that he wants to see Batiste back on CBS because he views him as a "legitimate actor in the debate."

O'Hanlon, who's also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has appeared on CBS dozens of times over the years. Though he openly backed the surge (with the caveat that he's skeptical that it will work), he wasn't disqualified as a CBS consultant by his high-profile support for the policy. CBS justified giving Batiste the ax by saying that Batiste's "advocacy" against the war disqualified him in the eyes of the network. CBS has since offered shifting justifications for the firing, as Think Progress has shown.

"I would be personally gratified to see Batiste back on CBS," O'Hanlon told me. "I find his opinions to be quite strong, but the approach he's taken is a legitimate one. I find him a legitimate actor in the debate."

O'Hanlon stopped short of directly criticizing CBS and noted that he didn't think CBS -- a news network that traffics less in strong opinions than, say, talk shows do -- was necessarily obliged to give Batiste a platform. But O'Hanlon did stress that he didn't think Batiste's views should disqualify him from the airwaves, adding that Batiste's views "should be part of the broader public debate."

Unclear why CBS has trouble with that concept. Is there anyone out there who agrees with CBS on this one? That's a real question, by the way.

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New York Times Pushing Inane "Dems Are The Mommy Party" Narrative
(May 15, 2007 -- 12:36 PM EDT // link // )

Check out the headline on Patrick Healy's latest Web-only column on Hillary in The New York Times:

The piece says: "Mrs. Clinton is, in essence, a mom running to lead the Mommy Party for all the other mommies (and daddies, too, to be fair), proposing policies that flow from her own insights on how the government does and does not help families."

Wow, that's quite a concession -- "daddies" support Dems, too!

I know this is supposed to be "freewheeling," given that this is the Web and all, and yeah, I get the Hillary-mom-mommy-party gag. But really: Have we now been reduced to describing Dems as the Mommy Party in our headlines with no quotes or visible irony?

Actually, let's use this occasion to ask a larger question: Does the assertion that Dems are seen as the Mommy Party have any basis whatsoever in any kind of empirical reality? Or is it time to retire this formulation?

I just checked in with Karl Agne, a veteran Dem strategist and pollster for Gerstein Agne Strategic Communications, and asked him what various ways one could gauge whether Dems are really viewed as the Mommy Party in any meaningful sense. He suggested a bunch of metrics: Percentage of males voting Dem. Numbers on "hard" strength indicators such as which party can be trusted on the generic issues of national security and terrorism. And numbers on whether Dems are viewed as "strong" leaders or not (not that moms can't make strong leaders, of course).

Okay, then. Over to the numbers.

(1) While more males voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 election, the 2006 midterms showed a shift in this trend. Exit polls found that in all the House races, 50% of men voted for Dem candidates, while only 47% of men voted for Republicans. Though more women also voted for Dems, the numbers on males are pretty striking.

(2) "Stronger" leaders? The most recent number I can find is from this Pew poll from March 29:

Which party has "stronger" leaders?

Democratic Party 41%
Republican Party 36%

That's a dramatic swing from last September, when the GOP won that question hands down, 43%-30%.

(3) "Hard" national security and terrorism numbers? Poll after poll has shown that Dems have erased the GOP's advantage on the issue.

Look, I don't mean to oversimplify matters. Could someone cherry pick from polls to create the impression that the "Mommy Party" perception is real? Probably. Do Dems need to worry about lingering perceptions of them as somehow "softer" on international affairs? Sure. And the piece does concede that Hillary has good "commander in chief" numbers -- in virtually the last paragraph, of course.

But come on, let's face it: The Mommy Party generalization has become inane and simplistic, and frolicking around with it is just unbecoming for the "paper of record." At bottom it's cause for embarrassment, really. As Agne aptly put it to me:

"This whole silly idea of a Mommy Party and a Daddy Party is of course based in the notion that voters trust Republicans more when it comes to 'hard' issues like war, terrorism, and security and Democrats more when it comes to 'soft' issues such as health care, education, environment, etc...The absolute crash of public confidence in the Republican Party over the last year has rendered this idea completely irrelevant."

Yet there it is, right in a Times headline.

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Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize-Winning China Reporters Write Letter Blasting Murdoch Takeover Bid
(May 14, 2007 -- 4:12 PM EDT // link // )

The pushback from the Wall Street Journal's journalists against Rupert Murdoch's bid to take over the paper is growing more and more intense.

Here's the latest: The paper's China-based reporters -- whose coverage won a Pulitzer this year -- have now sent a powerful letter to three key members of the Bancroft family, the Dow Jones Company's controlling shareholder. The letter -- to family members Leslie Hill, Elizabeth Steele and Christopher Bancroft, and to trustee Michael Elefante, all of whom are on Dow Jones' board -- warns that Murdoch could use the Journal as a tool to advance his business interests in China.

I've obtained a copy of the letter:

May 10, 2007

We are correspondents who report from China for The Wall Street Journal, and we are writing to urge you to stand by the Bancroft family's courageous and principled decision to reject News Corp.’s offer to acquire Dow Jones & Co.

There are only a handful of news organizations anywhere with the resources and the integrity to pursue the truth in matters of national and even global importance. Thanks to your family’s committed stewardship, the Journal is at the head of this dwindling group.

Our China team won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting this year for a series of stories detailing the consequences of China‘s unbridled pursuit of capitalism – for China and for the rest of the world. Many of those stories shed an unflattering light on the government and business interests.

The prize is a reflection of the Journal’s substantial investment in covering what is perhaps the biggest economic, business and political story of our time: how China‘s embrace of markets and its growing global role are reshaping the world we live in. It is an important example of the coverage that we fear would suffer if News Corp. takes control.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch has a well-documented history of making editorial decisions in order to advance his business interests in China and, indeed, of sacrificing journalistic integrity to satisfy personal or political aims.

Mr. Murdoch’s approach is completely at odds with that taken by your own family, whose unwavering support of ethical journalism has made the Journal the trusted news source it is. It is fair to ask how News Corp. would change the Journal’s coverage.

In 2001, for example, our colleague Ian Johnson shared the Pulitzer for international reporting for his articles about the Chinese government’s sometimes brutal suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Under Mr. Murdoch, these articles might never have seen the light of day. That year, Mr. Murdoch’s son, James, the CEO of British Sky Broadcasting, delivered a speech in California echoing the line of the Chinese government in terming Falun Gong a “dangerous” and “apocalyptic cult,” which “clearly does not have the success of China at heart.”

Newspaper accounts of the speech say that James Murdoch criticized the Western media for negative coverage of human-rights issues in China, concluding that "these destabilizing forces today are very, very dangerous for the Chinese government.”

We believe that it is important for all of us – from reporters and editors to you, the owners of the company – to keep constantly in mind the fact that the Journal is an institution that plays a critical role in civic life. We take pride in knowing that Journal readers trust us to uphold these principles, even in the face of risks.

Your family established and is now entrusted with a unique and important institution. Safeguarding it is a responsibility that you have fulfilled admirably for decades. Yours is the kind of stewardship journalists on the ground in China will require in the years to come if they are to accurately frame one of the world’s most critical news stories. We have enormous respect for your continued willingness to defend the journalistic standards so important to all of us.

Sincerely,

Gordon Fairclough
Mei F. Fong
James T. Areddy
Shai Oster
Jane Spencer
Andrew Batson
Jason S.L. Leow

Powerful stuff -- an eloquent reminder of just how big the stakes really are here.

Also note this letter from Journal reporter Ian Johnson -- currently a Nieman fellow -- offering an ugly first-hand glimpse of just how badly Murdoch-sponsored journalism in China has been compromised by his interests there.

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The Horse's Mouth Turns One Year Old!
(May 14, 2007 -- 11:26 AM EDT // link // )

Happy birthday, blog. Here's the first full-length Horse's Mouth post from May 14, 2006. As you can see, the basic storylines haven't changed all that much since then.

Lemme take this opportunity to say: Many, many thanks to all of you readers who stuck with this blog while it bounced from place to place, ending up here at TPM. Thanks to all you commenters who've enlivened the section day after day. And thanks to all the bloggers and Web sites -- Atrios, Think Progress, Media Matters, Steve Benen, FDL, Kos, and others who've steered traffic this way -- as well as to the snazzily redesigned American Prospect and now to Josh for hosting the site. We've got some new plans for the blog as part of the TPM redesign Josh wrote about recently -- we'll be sharing those plans within the next couple weeks.

And now, back to work...